


We Can't Be Too Loud

by golgothasTerror



Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-29
Updated: 2012-06-29
Packaged: 2017-11-08 19:34:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/446739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/golgothasTerror/pseuds/golgothasTerror
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You glance behind you before you flip open your phone. A familiar tipsy blonde is stirring a bit in her sleep, but nestles into her pillow and doesn't actually wake up. "Jake..?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Can't Be Too Loud

Your name is Dirk Strider, you're 21, and you really wish your boss would stop calling you at such bullshit hours of the night.

Correction, it's morning. 4am in the morning.

You mumble something incoherent under your breath and then carefully move to reach for your phone, which is vibrating just loud enough to wake you, from the top of the nearby night stand. It's also no big surprise that you have to push a few wine bottles out of the way to get there. Your weight shifts slowly against the mattress, as you feel for the phone in the dark of the room. At least it's tiny screen is providing some small amount of light. 

In one single movement you push yourself the remaining way off of the bed, and scoop your phone up in your hands, and awkwardly try to shove on your pair of grey sweat pants that were lounging on your side of the bed. You fumble with them for just a few seconds, as the phone's silent ringing continues. You briefly wonder just why you took that on-call job. Someone may have to remind you why it's a good idea to keep it at some point tomorrow. 

A small light in the hallway is still on, creeping into your otherwise dark bedroom.

You plan to slide out there to talk, just in case you want to rip your boss a new one.

 

You glance behind you before you flip open your phone. A familiar tipsy blonde is stirring a bit in her sleep, but nestles into her pillow and doesn't actually wake up.

By now whoever is calling you has let the phone ring a good ten times, so you finally move out into the hallway. You run a frustrated hand through your hair before looking at the screen for the first time, then your chest tightens in a way that it might not be able to fully recover from before you answer.

You shouldn't have let it ring for so long, because it certainly wasn't your boss.

As you answer, you voice is somehow steady, and you're thankful for that. 

Your eyes glance back at the bedroom door again right before you speak, "Jake?".

At first there's only silence on the other end of the phone, then a light breathing that's sounds unsteady, and you're worried. There's only a few seconds worth of a pause, but that's enough time for brain to unwillingly shoot into overdrive. You wonder what's wrong. You wonder why it's your best friend on the other end of the phone, and not your work place. You wonder if he just doesn't know what to say, despite calling you, or if something bad happened.

You can hear him, you know he's there because there's a small whimper on the other line at one point during your haze of thoughts, and that seems to halt them.

He's still silent, so you speak again, repeating yourself. 

"Jake?"

You mentally kick yourself for not being able to say something more helpful to the situation, and one that you fear isn't the best.

After another few moments of silence he finally speaks, but his voice is strained. At first you think that you're hearing things, and that it's your phones simultaneously being pieces of shit, but you know it's not. The speakers delude the sound a bit, but it's still horribly obvious. His voice is thick, and he swallows before speaking. 

"Dirk.."

That's a start, but now that he's speaking, your having trouble doing so yourself.

Your chest is still tight, and this isn't helping, but you keep that feeling out of your voice as best you can.

"Are.. are you crying?" 

You might be a Strider, you might be able to wield a sword like no other, you might be able to out-match an entire gang of men, but your reactions stop short at the sound of your friend crying. There are more muffled sounds from his end of the line, which sound like they might be a few quiet sobs. God, you wish he wouldn't cry.

When he replies, his voice is chipper at first, or at least it's trying to be, like maybe he's managed to push out at least that much energy during that pause. "Well! Strider, good buddy, I think.." His voice trails off then, and quickly loses it's finesse despite the fact that he only spoke a few words. He's not finishing his sentence again, and now its clearer - his crying. Like he's trying not to hide it so much anymore.

Yeah, you really wish he wouldn't cry like that. Right then you find yourself wanting to be able to hang up the phone, walk down the street and be at his house before he even had time to hang up the phone. You want to be able to tell him that's possible to achieve. You want to be able to make him stop crying, and consequences be damned, you want to be able to hold him. 

"I think.. I made a mistake." Jake's voice is shaky.

You freeze again, still not sure what to say besides things that shouldn't be said.

He's whispering, you're whispering, neither one of you can be too loud.

There goes your eyes hitting your bedroom door again, so you move silently a few steps further down the dimly lit hallway. 

You're about to answer, but this time he keeps talking and you tighten your jaw. You're not any less calm, but even so you find yourself moving to lean to the side against the wall. One of your arms stay at your side to rest, the other clutches the phone like it's a lifeline as you listen to everything on the other end. His voice, his breathing, any background noise. Your eyes close without you even realizing it.

"Dirk, I did. I made a blasted mistake, and I'm not sure how to fix it."  
Some of his words are harsh, like he's bitter, but he mostly still sounds entirely too beaten up.

Roxy makes a sound that you can hear from the hallway, but there's no movement following it, and you hope she's still asleep.

You keep your voice quiet, you know exactly what he's talking about, but you don't think it's best to make that too known.  
"What's wrong?"

He's still crying, but the underlining anger is still there. 

"This. All of this!" His whispers are as loud as you figure he can make them, after all you know full well that he's in the same position as you. He's likely not in his bedroom either. Maybe he's at his computer desk, or on the couch, any place that isn't his bedroom as that would risk waking up Jane. You've seen her when she's angry, and it's not fun. You also wouldn't want to hurt her, which is exactly what would happen if she were to catch Jake. He keeps talking, and you're still listening. "This is going to sound really, really bad of me, friend." You think he uses the term 'friend' loosely, in order to convince himself that that's all the two of you are. Though at the end of the day, you can practically hear his tears hitting against the phone speaker. 

"But.. this is wrong. This feels blood wrong! Don't mistake me, I love Jane, really! Just-"

He pauses, and you re-open your eyes and repeat his word, as if that'll keep him talking.

"Just?"

It does.

"Just.. not in the way that I should. Call me crazy for saying that about a woman such as herself!" his voice picked up at the end, like he was happy when he spoke about her, but it didn't change the overall mood. He attempted a laugh even, but it didn't work, and you could hear him swallow again. 

"Jake, she doesn't know you're calling, does she?"

Your voice is still steady, and his answer comes quickly this time.

"No! She can't. Err- she shouldn't, I just.." he tries to laugh again. "I'm being such a fool."

You think that he's not crying as much anymore, but you wish you could find enough words to stop it completely.

"That's nonsense, English."

You can hear sounds that muffle the speaker again, but it's not his crying, it's movement, like maybe he's walking around and you hear the sound of running water. Soon after there's the sound of glass hitting glass, and you assume he's wandered into the kitchen to get something to drink. Somehow you catch yourself almost smiling as you imagine such a scene, or at least you would be smiling if it weren't for the current situation. You want to say something more, but you're better with actions than you are with words, and presently you're states away. You can't just scoop him up into your arms, and you're starting to feel like whatever you say to him can't really help like you want it to. 

On the end of the other line, Jake exhales, which is louder than any of his words had been so far.  
"I-I had this dream, and.. I just wanted to hear your voice, Strider."

Your heart skips a few beats then, and you hate the distance between the two of you even more that you already did before.

It wasn't as if he'd never shown up in your dreams before, and you had lost more than few nights of sleep over it.

The two of you, Jake and yourself, you'd always had something there between you. Something that looked like friendship to other people, and what both of you hoped really was just friendship at the end of the day. Though, when you both were younger you'd spend days on end talking to each other online. When you met you clicked so insanely well, and it wasn't too longer much after that that your heart would unwillingly skip a beat every time his handle popped online on your Pesterchum client. You dropped hints that he either dodged with jokes, or pushed into 'What if' scenarios that were harmless to him, but hurt you more than you let on. 

Eventually, Jake got to a point where he would seemingly flirt back, or initiate it himself, and that left you confused.

At multiple points in time, all four of you, Jake, Jane, Roxy, and yourself had all met in person. You were teenagers by then, and sparks were bound to fly. Though not in the way that any of you expected. It left Roxy falling for you, and Jane falling for Jake, despite the fact that the two of you would watch each other when no one was looking. That was hard to explain to the two girls, and also hard to admit to yourselves. You had fears on your side, and he had fears on his, and you had originally let them leave things unspoken for the both of you. You moved in with Roxy, trying to convince yourself that that's what was normal. It seemed that Jake had done the same with Jane. The girls were elated at first, but you were sure Roxy was suspicious, and despite your efforts to fall in love with her, she was just a good friend and you had a hunch that she could see right through you.

Your eyes stung as you thought about all this, and you tried to blink them back into behaving normally. 

It was then that you realized you might've paused for a few seconds too long, because Jake spoke again.

"Dirk?"

He sounded more composed, and curious, perhaps he had taken a few drinks of water by now. 

Your own name echoed momentarily in your ears, and you were tempted to stay silent just so he would say it again.

However, you had your own idea of what to say, you just had to wait for him to stop talking, because he had started up again.

He was Jake, after all, and Jake did a lot of talking when he was nervous.

"Y-you know, this is silly, lets just hang up and pretend this never happened, okay? Good then. Bully. It's probably best if-"

"I love you."

You'd cut him off without caring, but you also had no choice, because any more seconds of waiting and you might have retracted that line.

It might've stupid, and it might've been in the moment, and it might've been an all around bad decision, but fuck every thing. You were going to speak your mind, so help you, even if some part of your thoughts in the back of your mind wished that you could go back in time and take it back. In general you didn't regret it, and you latched onto that. Dirk Strider was apparently done keeping secrets. Especially one's that you both knew weren't really secrets at all, just words that you'd always stopped from escaping your lips. It doesn't mean they weren't finding themselves horribly obvious in other ways.

Jake was still silent on the other end of the phone, and you thought you heard a ceramic clank, like maybe something had fallen or knocked over.

"I- what?"

You knew damn well he'd heard what you said.

"I love you, Jake", you repeated again, and it wasn't shaky, nor a question, nor some form of sarcasm, it was a statement.

One that felt so completely natural, and yet actually saying it was weird to you, so you understood his hesitation.

 

You took his silence as him gathering himself, but wasn't nearly as long this time, and he stammered on his words before resulting on a "Ssssh!"

Had he just hushed your confession?

"Dirk! Are you mad? What if Roxy- what if she hears you?"

His voice was wavering again.

"I don't care."

You knew where you stood on this, and you were tired of not saying anything. You were half tempted to walk loudly back into your bedroom, turn on the overhead light, sit down harshly enough on the bed to wake Roxy up, and then nearly shout your feelings into the phone. Yet that would backlash onto Jake and Jane, and it would hurt Roxy, and you just didn't have it in you, at least not yet. It wasn't the right time. 

 

"Right then, bro please, can't we just-"

"No. Jake, _you_ called me, not the other way around! Why?"

You left him with a question so that he would feel more forced into an answer, because while you weren't sure how, this had gotten you rather frustrated.

"I- Because, I.."

You sigh into the phone, it was truthful, but he seemed to take it as a push, because he finished his statement - sort of.

"You see, I- Dirk, ol' buddy, pal, chum, best bro."

There was another halt on his end.

"Jake." At his words, a small smile started to curve on your lips for a split second before you let it fall again.

He steadied his voice before speaking again. "I love you, too."  
That had been a statement as well, and he said nothing afterward, like he was taking in what was happening.

You swallowed, as if that fought back most of your emotions, but you allowed that smile to form now.

This was a step in the right direction, even if you couldn't do anything about it right at this moment, and even if it risked more than you cared to think about, you found yourself at least in better mood than you had been in a few minutes ago. Your living situation with Roxy, and Jake's situation with Jane, your lives revolved around those things right now, but in time you were determined to put the pieces of this particular puzzle in their proper places. Despite that, you could nothing right now. Not for yourself, and not for Jake. So you took a deep breath, gained more composure, and then spoke up.

Jake had gone silent too, but there were no muffled tears, no breaking cups, the silence wasn't all too awkward.

You gave a small laugh before speaking.

"Yeah, but we can't do anything about that, not right now."

"Dirk."

You think that maybe he just liked the sound of your name, heck, _you_ liked the sound of your name, so long as it was him who said it.

"Go back to bed", you nearly give that out as an order, but your voice is gentle. "I'll call you tomorrow."

"G-Goodnight, friend."

That's another thing, you would have to get Jake to stop relying on that term.

Yet that was for another time, another phone call, one that wouldn't fall at 3am, and one that wouldn't start out so rocky. You figured that at the very least, he wouldn't have to call you in tears anymore, and even if that had been the only change in your life anytime soon, you still wouldn't regret anything that had just been said. One step at a time, and two girlfriends to break the news to, unfortunately. In the end, all that you wanted was only a few states away, you weren't going to give up. Even if that meant sitting through hundreds of really bad movies. You were at your happiest just hearing his voice.

Your phone snapped close then, the call dropping as it shut, right after you'd answered him rather simply, regardless of all the thoughts you'd just had.

As you made your way back into the bedroom you repeated yourself again, as the door slowly closed behind you, and the phone found itself back on the nightstand.

There was still a smile on your face that wouldn't seem to fade.

"Goodnight, Jake."

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure what this was supposed to be? It's also not going to span past this one-shot. I heard Lips of An Angel by Hinder again for the first time in a few years. Used to love that song back when it first came out. *shakes cane* I felt compelled to write this after hearing it, because that's how my brain works right now. v u v Jane and Roxy were originally going to be faceless characters, but I like them, and I wanted them to be included somehow.


End file.
